"we get all sorts around here."

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Shadows on the Wall 10(/17?)

The television snaps off and John turns to Sherlock who is staring into the middle distance. It's fascinating, in a 'bad accident on the M1' sort of way to watch Sherlock compartmentalising away Ruth's death.

"He killed the old lady because she started to describe him," Sherlock says thoughtfully. John watches as his eyes brighten with the light of revelation and feels his stomach twist. He turns to watch Sherlock, watches the shadows flickering and darkening around him. "Just once, he put himself in the firing line."

"What d'you mean?" John asks. Yes, of course Moriarty was in Ruth's apartment; John can still remember the disgusted snapshots from Ruth. (How he'd giggled and his shoes had squeaked when he'd bounced on his heels in excitement.)

"Well, usually he ...must stay above it all," Sherlock says, picking up speed and confidence as the connections form and his brain – that brilliant machine that runs like a Rolls engine – kicks into gear. "He organises theses things, but no-one ever has direct contact."

"What, like the Connie Prince murder," John asks as his mind flashes to the furtive gleam in Raoul's eye. Raoul who loved not wisely but too well and who grew up on stories of a great-uncle who had walked into Schirmeck concentration camp with a picture of his lover sewn into the inside of his coat. Raoul had only seen the monster in Connie and he'd killed her but he was a personal assistant, not a member of the SAS. Murder by botox wasn't something he was capable of dreaming up. "He arranged that?"

John gets a shivery feeling down his spine and a sense of something like a huge foul spider's web, organic and messy and everywhere. He can see the shape of it and Sherlock's distracted, focused on the evidence and the effort of peeling away his emotional responses to Ruth (and Rashid and Martha and Mary and....). John can tip his hand, ramble a little because Sherlock's already worked it out. "So, people come to him wanting their crimes fixed up, like booking a holiday?"

"Novel," Sherlock breathes and for a second, just one second, John wants to vomit. There's something so beguiled about the breathless comment and Sherlock's smiling (not with his mouth, that's for witnesses and police officers who don't know better. Sherlock's mouth lies like a candle in a draft flickers. His eyes are smiling, bright and alive and he's halfway to being in love with this Moriarty.)

"Huh," John is numb for few seconds, turning back to the television to hide the sting of his eyes and his face from the nearly-perfect sociopath who's sitting in his best friend (the man John loves because he's never known how to stop loving once he falls, only how to soldier on with the gaping void tucked away under khaki or the white coat)'s skin. They're showing Raoul's arrest and John watches him run for the car, like he can be safe if he finds the right place to hide. (He's not going to make it past the arraignment; Moriarty will be vastly put-out and Joe Downs, the homophobic cellmate will take most of the night to die, pissing himself and begging for a mercy that will never come).

John's last image of Raoul is his face (so young, so very young and so very bloody stupid) and John can taste, thick and clogging his throat, the blood that will fill his lungs and drown him and god, Jesus, no! There has to be something, some clue, some hint that John can give Lestrade. Raoul de Santos doesn't have to die.

The future can be changed. John has to believe that.

Behind him, Sherlock says something. His face settles into a more familiar exasperated expression and John clears his throat, coughing away the lingering feel of blood as he watches Mark Prince stare out the window at the black car. (He knows the number, isn't stupid, isn't blind and somewhere in London, in a blank empty office, a phone that even Mycroft doesn't know exists is ringing and Moriarty's newest voicemail greets him by name...)

John's surge of anger is explosive and he swallows it down. Sherlock owes John nothing; John shouldn't be angry that Sherlock didn't (doesn't ever) see that John is in love with him: that John loves him enough that Sherlock never has to love him back.

Re: Shadows on the Wall 10(/17?)

Shadows on the Wall 11(/17?)

John keeps his eyes on the television and forces his voice even. Sherlock still isn't looking (not at him) and John has done this before and survived it. (His dad spent every moment he wasn't drunk explaining why he wasn't an alcoholic. His mum tried to make them a functional family by sheer force of will and never admitted there was any such thing as a problem. Harry, with the night-life sparkling off her broken edges, who wants a brother when she's desperate or sober or lonely or all of the above and pretends he doesn't exist when she's happy.)

He asks about Carl Powers because Carl is important. He doesn't see how, not yet but even when it isn't clear, John's learnt the weight of important information, how the distortions and echoes shape around the thought of Carl Powers suffocating in the chlorine and clamour of the pool with the lifeguard screaming for an ambulance. (Her name was Katy. She blamed herself for it until she died saving a kid from a drunk driver. There's a plaque up to her in her church, pristine among the graffiti and-)

-and none of this is relevant. If John were Sherlock, maybe all this mental clutter would be useful. He'd know who Moriarty was, why Carl died and he'd stop this. John keeps watching as the television shows the flats again and there are figures, people huddled together at the very edge of the police tape.

John asks about the classmates and still, he's angry, fists loosely clasped and eyes resolutely turned away. Sherlock answers languidly, unable to bear not being the centre of attention but equally incapable of feigning a genuine interest in anything but his blasted precious fucking cases.

-miss the point completely? John waits a beat, two but Sherlock is still staring into the middle distance, smiling.

Oh, oh no. Sherlock doesn't get to do this to him. John is used to just being the sounding board for everything from Mycroft's latest diet lapse (he only had hot chocolate on Friday because he'd eaten nothing else) to Sherlock's vaguely interested assessments of handsome young men – and wasn't that excruciating, John thinks because whatever else he is he's honest with himself. John knows more about Sherlock than anyone realises, just because he's always there.

It hurts worse than either of the bullets, burns like the phantom searing that promises John's future isn't going to be boring (or very long-term) to realise that Sherlock isn't going to talk about Moriarty. Moriarty who is different, Moriarty who is special and Jesus, John is jealous.

The skull is cackling like an old woman with a fifty a day habit and Joe in the fridge is calling Sherlock 'a right plonker'.

Pride wars with the need to know and John asks because this is important and if he waits for Sherlock to realise that John is feeling excluded, they'll be here until Doomsday. "So why is he doing this then? Playing this game with you. Do you think he wants to be caught?"

"I think he wants to be distracted," Sherlock says in a tone that John has never heard him use before, rough and wanting and John can't take it any more. He can't keep loving Sherlock while Sherlock destroys himself (again. Last time it was drugs, saved by Mycroft who can panic and make human mistakes like screaming at a stupid, selfish little brother who has nearly died and it's a toss-up whether Sherlock hates him more for the save or the too true dressing down in the middle of the hospital.)

"Oh," John pushes up, away because if he doesn't get something solid between him and Sherlock right this second, he's going to kill the bastard. "I hope you'll be very happy together."

Because this is a line John has to draw, now and as unambiguously as possible. If Sherlock wants Moriarty, well, John's just another in a long line of idiots and he'll try to stop them and probably fail but Sherlock cannot - will not - ever be able to have Moriarty and John.

(It's not a choice, Sherlock's already chosen) and John's never been good enough even for a 'normal' person.

Shadows on the Wall 12(/17?)

He sounds perplexed in that annoyed way he has when John is being too mundane to bear and John erupts. Sherlock will make use of John's knowledge, the hard-earned skills of his profession but at times like this, John wonders if Sherlock is really so staggeringly ignorant of what a doctor is.

["I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity; "]

"There are lives at stake, Sherlock," John shouts and in his head he hears it as an echo of Major Doctor Reginald Daziel who had taught him how all the 'fancy-pants school learning' translated into life or death on the front lines. He had taken to John over the Scottish connection, even if it was more theoretical than anything else in John's case. He was the best doctor John has ever known. "Actual human lives!"

["I will give to my teachers the respect and gratitude which is their due; "]

Daziel was the only person John ever tried to tell; he'd been barely twenty-three, still a wet little medical student scuttling after the Major/Doctor and terrified and awed by Desert Storm and the reality of war. He'd stammered and fumbled his words, trying (and failing) to warn without giving everything away and Reginald Daziel died in the sand surrounded by the Army and life he'd loved. John still goes to put flowers on his grave every Thursday he's in London.

["I will practise my profession with conscience and dignity; the health of my patient will be my first consideration; "]

"Just so I know, do you care about that at all?" John demands because he's dying here. He needs some sign that Sherlock's sociopath act is still only skin-deep because god knows he's getting nothing to hang his hopes on from the rest of the case.

"Will knowing about them help save them?" Sherlock demands coldly, like John is being wilfully stupid just to antagonise him. More than just that, he looks offended as if John has said something that isn't true.

["I will maintain by all the means in my power, the honour and the noble traditions of the medical profession; my colleagues will be my brothers; "]

"Then I'll continue not to make that mistake." Sherlock's practically sneering at him and John will grant that Sherlock is smarter than him, more confident and better in countless ways but John will not ever concede that being a normal, empathic human being is something he should be ashamed of.

"And you find that easy, do you?" John asks before he can calm down enough to think or consider tactics or a measure approach.

"Yes, very. Is that news to you?"

"No, no."

["I will not permit considerations of religion, nationality, race, party politics or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient; "]

"I've disappointed you," Sherlock says, looking at John in a way he hasn't since that first case.

"That's good, that's a good deduction, yeah." John laughs a little, everything so clear in the light of his burning bridges.

"Don't make people into heroes, John. Heroes don't exist and if they did, I wouldn't be one of them."

["I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception, even under threat, I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity; "]

The blasted phone goes and Sherlock abandons the conversation in favour of his new fascination and John stands and stares at him. He wonders, a tiny echoing thought in the hollow where his heart used to be, if Sherlock will even notice when John is gone.

John comes slowly to attention, puts back his shoulders and crosses slowly to the pile of papers. Sherlock will believe it was his ability to manipulate but John is a doctor before he's anything else and someone, somewhere, needs his help if they're going to survive the day.

John can save them, or help at least and John took an oath to save every life he could. What's a broken heart compared to saving a life?

Re: Shadows on the Wall 12(/17?)

oh. my. god. that was stunning. absolutely, completely, stunning and i have no words. the writing and imagery is astounding.this is definitely one of the best fics i've read in a long while. and i thank you so very much for it!